Paul Krugman Quotes

In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.

The middle-class America of my youth was another country.

I think solving the problems of America is what's good.

There's unrecognizable change happening in Britain. The life prospects and job prospects, particularly of working-class people, have been severely dented. Without anyone being asked.

Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes - one rich, one poor - both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?

There is no alternative to class struggle.

The class war is over.

There is a lack of collective support or social support for working people in America. We're told, "You can be, as an individual, anything you want to be, but it must be at something else's - or somebody else's - expense."

Class war is not the cause of social progress; it is a disease developed in the course of social progress. The cause of the disease is the inability to subsist, and the result of the disease is war.

Poverty is the fundamental cause of most of the physical, moral and economic ills of humanity.

There are levels of poverty in South Africa that are totally unacceptable.

I believe capitalism is dying a slow death right now, as you can see with the recession and with the credit crunch and with social and economic dismay the world as whole and the pandemic of promiscuity, drugs, alcohol and all the other diseases. That's the worst and I believe it's time for a change.

They talk about class warfare -- the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years. It's a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class of this country. And the result is you now have in America the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?

I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another.

If you go to working class, and working poor areas of America, the food sources that are relegated to them are generally limited to unhealthy ones.

Families are struggling to put bread on the table, send their kids to college and take care of their basic needs. America needs a political revolution.

This country's going to have a revolution if something doesn't happen the haves and have - nots.

Racial, globalist free markets hasn't worked for everybody in America - hasn't worked for at least the white working, or lower middle class in America don't perceive that it has worked very well for them. It hasn't served everybody, and a bit of protectionism - for many American voters - seems like quite an attractive thing.

The neoliberal programs of the last generation have in fact been, and were intended to be, a pretty serious attack on democracy, but also they've led to stagnation or decline for large parts of the population - the working class, the lower middle class, these people have essentially been cast aside.

I believe the Democratic Party has got to be firmly on the side of working families, taking on the big money interests, who today, to a very significant degree, control our economic and political life.

My friends, that's trickle-down economics, and I believe every worker in America is tired of being trickled on by George W. Bush

America has tolerated inequality because people think they can get ahead. If you have immobility on top of inequality, then people are not going to be happy campers. If you're stuck on the bottom and there just isn't much churning in society and you're stuck there through your adulthood, that's not a nice life to look forward to.

I'm just seeing as I grow older, and hopefully wiser, that a lot of things I see from a race perspective are class problems too, so I should be advocating for all.

Socially, I never belonged to any class, rich or poor. To the rich I was poor, and to the poor I was poor pretending to be like the rich.

Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process.